Saturday, January 30, 2010

A lot of people wrote to me and said they particularly liked this cartoon, so I've put it on a T-shirt. If you want to display your wickedly sophisticated sense of humor and musical taste, order yours now.

Don't forget they also make great gifts for the musician or audiophile in your life!

Here's another of my Sunday Punnies series, which is a collection of three puns mostly submitted by readers and friends. If you have an idea for a fun pun and would like to see it in Bizarro with no compensation whatsoever other than the fun of seeing your idea in print, send it to me. The puns need to be original in that you didn't see it in another comic or on the Internet or whatever. And you should be aware that most of the ideas people send are not accepted because I'm looking for something of a certain type and style that I find both unusual and interesting visually. If all that makes sense to you, submit away, what have you got to lose?

You can either send them to me in the comments section of one of my blog posts, or via email. My address is at Bizarro.com.

By the way, the comics that get credited are from close friends or colleagues as a special favor, in the past I have not been doing that for everyone. But my new policy will be give a small credit line – like the "w/Brandt" above – for anyone whose idea I use for a Sunday Punny. Weeeee!

Friday, January 29, 2010

I have a good friend back in Texas who has run a recording studio for decades. Every now and then he'll share some of the more "noteworthy" music that he has recorded for clients there and I often wonder how he survives. As we know from the popular TV show, "American Idol," (which I am proud to say I've never watched a moment of, the commercials are plenty) not everyone who thinks they can be a rock star has a single iota of talent.

For reasons unclear to me, I'm particularly sensitive to music. I literally cannot tolerate listening to music that I don't like. I become instantly irritable, my heart rate rises, my teeth turn into fangs and I am not satisfied until someone is dead. I don't mean to say that I'm a public *sshole about it, but I will quietly leave a store or restaurant if the music is offensive to me, whether I've finished my business there or not. This is perhaps the biggest reason I dislike the Xmas season so much, the offensive music is ubiquitous.

It wouldn't be such a curse if I liked most popular music, but I don't. I'm very picky. Any single song from any recording of such popular bands as Eagles, Steely Dan, Steve Miller Band, Abba, Billy Joel, Metallica, Rush, all hip hop (yes, I know that is a very general statement, but I can't stand 'rhyme talking' of any kind,) drives me over a cliff. And that's just a fraction of the bands I can't stand. I wish I wasn't this way, but there's nothing I can do about it.

That being said, I've been learning to play the guitar and have been writing songs and recording them on my computer. One day I'm going to record them in a "real" studio and sell a CD through my website and this blog. So I may be the guy behind the glass in the cartoon above soon enough (though it's a cinch my music will ever be popular enough to drive shoppers from stores.)

The Mysterious anonymous winner of Contest #16 did, in fact, write back to me in the comments and successfully claim his/her submission. But he/she did not leave his/her email address once again, this time saying that because he/she (tired of this lack of an appropriate non-gender specific pronoun for this situation?) did not enter correctly, the prize should go to the second place winner.

Okay, that's fine but I just want to say that not leaving your email address does not disqualify you from winning. I'm happy to send you some cards. If you want to leave your email in the comments section, I'll write it down and delete the comment immediately. If you're not comfortable with it, no problem, I understand. I promise not to use your info against you, or even keep it on file if it worries you.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Thanks to everyone who played our incredibly exciting Bizarro Puzzler Teaser Treasure Hunt Game Thing this week. We have our three winners, with a caveat.

1. First place goes to someone good at solving puzzles but not at reading instructions. It was submitted anonymously and had no email address. So who are you? Below, I have posted your winning list. If you can tell me what expletive you began your post with, then provide me with an email address, I'll send you your prize. Leave it in the comments section to any post, I'll see it when I moderate comments and not post your email address.

2. Second place goes to he who goes by "dcr". He's won second place before, and may win first place this week if I don't hear from our mysterious anonymous submitter.

3. Goes to Randy S. He, too, has won before too, taking top honors in contest #15.

A couple of submitters got in before any of you three, but neither had all 15 correct answers.

RULES, ETC:As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in 15 ways. Your mission, if you are the disco royalty that I think you are, is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.2.NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "Is the hat on this one is a shade lighter than the other one? Hmmm.")4.FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differencesin the comments section of the post wins 4 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquartersin Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!5.Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.6. If you live outside the U.S., I may not be able to send you a prize. Depends. Canada is probably fine, Saudia Arabia, probably not.

I draw the vast majority of things in my cartoons from memory but now and then I like to get things especially right, which was the case with the zebras here. While researching pictures of zebras online for this cartoon, I was struck by how incredibly beautiful they are. You get used to looking at things all your life and tend to take them for granted, but I find that if I take a moment to step outside myself and imagine I'm seeing something for the first time, like many people before the invention of photography certainly did with animals like zebras, it is truly amazing. A white horse all covered with bold black stripes. It's like they were concieved by a talented gay designer. Unfortunately for the zebras, this has also led to a lot of arrogant disregard for their lives.

A regular reader wrote to me this week and asked me if the face in the tail area was intentional. It was not, but I see something that looks a bit like a face so he's not totally crazy. Anybody else notice this or is LeRoy perhaps crazier than I think?

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I have a few friends and acquaintances who believe in Bigfoot, Sasquatch, whatever you want to call it, so it's been on my mind lately and I've done more Bigfoot cartoons per calendar year than I normally would. Just for the record, I'm open minded but generally not a believer of things that can't be proven and I'm not a believer in Bigfoot. But how fun would it be to see Bigfoot in a pair of big, whapping clown shoes? Pretty dang fun, I reckon.

Some people say that not believing in things that cannot be proven takes the mystery out of life. But I think there is more mystery and wonder in the actual scientific nature of the universe than I could ever hold in my nano-noggin, so I don't feel the need to believe in magic, monsters, fairies, "signs", wizards, angels, gods, devils, spirits, or the like. It just doesn't interest me. If it interests you, go for it. Whatever works.

Tell your friends about tomorrow's contest, it's more fun the more people that play. Look how happy these previous winners are.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

I've never thought of myself as much of a caricaturist, but the pig character does look an awful lot like Steve Schirripa as his character, Bobby 'Bacala' Baccalieri on The Sopranos, who, more than likely, loves his prosciutto. I don't blame him, when I was still eating animals, I loved prosciutto, too. In fact, my parents used to run an Italian deli and sold some of the most delicious home recipes. Yum. As most of my readers know, I don't eat that way anymore.

I mostly did this cartoon because I thought the name Tony "Chest Pain" Proscuitto was funny.

I think I'll do another contest this week, for those of you who have been asking for it. Look for it on Thursday at 7pm NYC time. Here's a link to a past contest so you'll know what this is about if you're new to the game. Same basic rules and prizes.

Monday, January 25, 2010

This was a fun cartoon to draw with all its little bird people. I like to draw birds and some of my favorites are featured in the header panel for this cartoon, shown below. Some papers use these panels, some use thinner ones like this or this, some use none, depends on how comics section is laid out.Some of the birds at left are tattooed on my right forearm, as a matter of fact. Looky here.

I got a few emails last week from people who didn't understand this cartoon. The joke hinges on the expression, "naked as a Jaybird." I'm not sure if people who didn't get the joke just didn't make the connection or had simply never heard the expression. Where I come from, people say this sort of thing all the time.

That's all for today, go forth this week and conquer your kingdom with sparkles.

Friday, January 22, 2010

I've been pimping all week about the 25th anniversary of Bizarro, and this is it. A quarter of a century ago today, the first Bizarro ran in seven U.S. newspapers. Now it appears in a few hundred in the U.S., Canada, Norway, Sweden, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, some other places in Europe and a couple in South America, I think. The foreign markets are hard to keep track of.

There have been 13 books of Bizarro cartoons published since 1986, most of which are out of print now. Bizarro has won some awards from the National Cartoonists Society, The Humane Society, and some other people I can't recall the name of. I've been fortunate to travel quite a bit for business reasons, and met tons of amazing people.The crowning achievement of all that time, however, was when Bizarro and I were used as a clue on Jeopardy! a couple of years ago. That's when I felt like I'd actually permeated the national consciousness in some small way. I got a huge kick out of it and tried to contact them to see if I could buy a video tape of that episode, but no luck.

You may think that all of that adds up to fame and fortune, but you'd be wrong. I'm a little bit famous, in some areas, in some circles, and not at all rich. But I'm not complaining. I've made a nice living doing what I like on my own time, and I'd be an arrogant ass to not be abundantly grateful. My dad often tells this story on himself – when I was in the 9th grade he often told me that if I didn't stop drawing all over my school notebooks and study harder, I was never going to amount to anything. This happened to be one of the few times he was wrong about such things and man, am I glad.

Here's a little mini-retrospective of some of my work from the past. Yesterday I posted the first Bizarro cartoon that published on January 22, 1985, here are a few more from subsequent years.

In this comic from 1987, which I've come to call "Rednecks Tampering with Physics," I'd started to clean up my inking a bit. There isn't nearly as much scratchy, crosshatching as that which filled my first year's efforts. The joke is a little more sophisticated, too, and marks the first time I started getting into a groove that doesn't make me cringe when I look back on it. I still like this joke after all these years (although not so much the drawing,) and that's saying something. Early on, the majority of my gags were more pun-oriented, or slapstick. This one has an odd concept that I think still works. I later did a new illustration of this one in color for a calendar. Wish I could find it, it's somewhere around here.

Here is one from 1988. Though I switched to using a brush around '91 or so, I was still using a pen here. This one is an experiment with pretty dramatic perspective, something not often seen in newspaper comics then (or now, for that matter) and I'm continuing to clean up my look. You can see how a gag like this would not be legible if the inking were not clean. My kids were in school then, and there were plenty of little trophies around the house, which gave me the idea for this gag. Not brilliant or classic, but it's a fun visual gag.

This praying mantis joke from 1990 is a cartoon I'd completely forgotten about until I found it in an old book of mine while looking for cartoons for this post today. This is among the last cartoons I did before switching to a brush. I hadn't quite refined the caption box thing at the bottom, yet. This one is crooked and badly lettered. The underlining is distracting, too. I still like the weirdness of this gag, though. In those days, I had to fix things by cutting and pasting and using White Out, so things like crooked type didn't get fixed. Now I can fudge them on computer in a matter of seconds, and no one is the wiser.

I did cartoons only six days-a -week from 1985 to 1990, then started doing Sunday cartoons, too. Here is one of the earliest ones, which I still like. This was when I was coloring the old-fashioned way, marking up a zerox of the cartoon with hundreds of little CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) percentage numbers to indicate each color, then sending them to the company responsible for creating film for client newspapers. It was tedious, time consuming, and involved a huge amount of guesswork. I redid this gag years later after I was coloring my own work on computer. Don't remember when, though.

Lastly for today, a favorite cartoon of mine from 1994. By this time I had begun inking with a brush, had changed the way I letter bottom captions, but had not yet developed the current lettering style I use for balloons, which happened in '96. This is another one of those gags that would not work unless the drawing is clean and resolved. I could not have done this earlier in my career, without it looking like a complete mess. I am fortunate enough to have climbed the tiny spiral staircase inside the Statue of Liberty back before 9/11, when they closed it to tourists. The inside is hollow and looks pretty much like this except without organs. You can see the entire statue in negative, however ,which I found really fascinating. It would be even more amazing with organs, though.

Hope you enjoyed my anniversary retrospective. Abrams Books published a really nice retrospective of my various forays into the arts a couple years ago, which has this kind of stuff and lots more. It covers my cartoon career, fine art, commercial art, comedy show tours I've done and my personal life, all written by me in what I intended to be simultaneously humorous, informative, entertaining and inspirational. You can get a copy in various online places, or here, from me. Hurry, this one is out of print, too, and when the warehouse is empty, it'll be too late. : )

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Bizarro is brought to you today by Personally Humiliating Work From The Past.As I mentioned in yesterday's post, tomorrow, Friday the 22nd of January, 2010, is the 25th anniversary of Bizarro. A few readers understandably wondered if the cartoon posted yesterday was the first one that ever ran. It was not, the abomination posted here entitled, "Sock Exchange" was the very first, as you can see by the publication date nestled beneath the psychotically scrawled signature.

Let's deconstruct the awfulness, shall we? At present, I draw everything with a small brush on bristol board, which is a kind of very thick paper that is standard among professional cartoonists. Back then, not knowing what I was doing, how I should do it, or my ass from my elbow, I drew with a rapidograph technical pen on tracing paper. Yes, TRACING paper! So if you were wondering why the image above looks as though it were etched by an asylum inmate on wax with a piece of wire, now you know. Using a tech pen is perfectly fine if you're drawing in a clean, neat style. Like this guy. But I was was trying to use a pen to do things a brush does. Took me a few years to figure that out. Perhaps I shouldn't have dropped out of art school.

The joke isn't so bad, I'd use it today if I'd just thought of it, but the drawing is really something hideous. I had been doing ultra-realistic commercial illustrations of food products for a living, similar to this, and had not been drawing cartoons long enough nor consistently enough to have developed any kind of style. My biggest influence was B. Kliban, but my early work didn't look anything like his, either. Besides, I didn't want people to think I was borrowing from someone else's style, so I just flew off in a random direction in hopes of developing my own look. Which I eventually did, but it took a few years.

And check out that winsome signature. Such style, such grace, such suckage. It looks like it was constructed of burned fragments of a wooden fence.

I'm happy my work isn't this clumsy anymore, that's one good thing about getting older.

Below are two earlier cartoons of mine from 1995 and 1998. By this time I was drawing with a brush and you can see that I changed my lettering style somewhere between those dates. I was still using a tech pen to letter, but later did that with a brush, too.

Tomorrow I'll post a cartoon or two from different years throughout the process to show how my drawings have changed.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

As a change of pace, here is an old old old Bizarro from the late 1900s. I just realized a few minutes ago that Friday, January 22, 2010, marks the 25th anniversary of the first Bizarro cartoon that appeared in newspapers. I had seven client papers on opening day: Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, and I can't remember the other four. Now I have something under a million client papers. (Keeping in mind that any number under one million qualifies for that statement.)

Wow. I don't want to bore you with a lot of talk about how the time has flown by and I can't believe I've been doing this for a quarter of a century, but damn. All of that is true. To be honest, it fills me with a mixture of pride and sadness. Time is a mindf*ck.

Twenty five years is a long time to be doing anything. Before Bizarro I don't think I held any job for an entire year – as I recall, 11 months was my record. Of course, this job is more like freelancing than a "real" job, in that nobody cares what I do all day as long as I send them seven cartoons each week.

Things that have changed about this job in 25 years:

1985-1987, I finished my cartoons a week ahead of deadline so I could send them by U.S. post to my editor. I was making so little money that I could not justify any other means.

1988, I started making enough to get by and began overnighting them with Fed Ex. Now I could work on the cartoons up until 6:30pm the night before they were due and get them to the Fed Ex office by 7.

In the early '90s I got a computer and email, but it was still a few years before Internet was fast and secure enough to send large images easily. I hadn't yet learned to color my Sunday panels myself yet, either, so I was still marking them up with colored pencil with CMYK percentages and having them done at a coloring service that the entire industry used. This was the way everyone did it then. I had no idea what the image would really look like until it printed in papers many weeks later. It was difficult, required a lot of guessing and the early Sunday panels were not as intricate as they are now, but I tried.

In the late 90s I began doing all my own coloring and things haven't changed too much since then. Now I can achieve almost any coloring effect I can dream up and can wait until the last second to finish my work and send it by Internet in a few seconds. Usually, though, I send them a day or two after they are due. I'm bad, I know, but this creativity thing is difficult to do on schedule.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I've always found the underdog irresistible, so cartoons about animals eating people are automatically fun for me. That doesn't mean they're also "funny" but I think this one is kind of a giggle. Bacon bits, indeed. Ha.

My back hurts today. It is one of those sore muscles right in between my shoulder blades, you know the one. Evidently, anything you attempt to do with your body starts with this muscle. I can't touch my forefinger to my thumb without feeling a twinge in the middle of my back.

The way I achieved this unbearable malady was by throwing something at a cat in the middle of the night. There is a cat door in our bedroom and two nights ago when I went to bed the wind was blowing so hard that the cat door was staying open by a few inches and cold air was flowing in like a mini tornado. So I taped a piece of cardboard over it.

Even though none of our three cats had been out for hours because of the weather, they found this temporary barrier unacceptable and began picking at the edges of the cardboard with their little cat hands. I shouted at them a few times, which is as effective as blinking real hard at them, then eventually I rose up on one elbow and threw a pillow. Pinch went the back muscle, the cats scattered, and here I am.

Monday, January 18, 2010

I got lots of emails about this one. A few were from people who liked it because they'd had various types of personal experiences with babies on motorcycles (!) and the rest were from so-called "airheads," people who are fans of the BMW air-cooled "slash-5" series motorcycles from the early 1970s.

The bike in the pic is fashioned after mine, although mine is white, and many readers familiar with this era of BMW bikes recognized it and wrote to ask if I am an airhead. It was nice to meet so many other airheads around the country, thanks for checking in. Once the weather turns nice here in the northeast, how about we all meet for a weekend ride?

Thanks also to all of you who wrote to me with suggestions of where I should move to escape the NY winters. All were good suggestions, and I adding them to my research list. I suspect that eventually I shall end up in California somewhere, probably more southern than northern if only because of the weather, but you never know.

One thing that surprised me was how many people suggested Austin, Texas. It's a great town and I love it but I always sort of thought that it was because I used to live in Texas. It is nice to see that it ranked so highly among people nationwide, right alongside the SF Bay Area and southern California in general. Way to go, Austin!

Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria, B.C. are all great and I'm very fond of it up there, but it rains too much. I've definitely got that light deprivation thing where if I don't get a LOT of sunshine, I begin invading neighboring countries and impaling people on tall sticks. Just bought one of those light-therapy-box-things and I hope it works.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The idea of snails attempting to jump pretzels was suggested by my good friend, Dick Cabeza. I loved the idea and am really happy with the way the illustration turned out. I like to draw abstracted, cartoony images, but for some reason this sort of idea is more appealing to me as a realistic drawing. It adds to the surreal quality.

Brooklyn warmed up yesterday and I took "the Beast" out for a spin for the first time in months. So rejuvinating. At times like these I wish I lived in one of those year-round-nice-weather climates that you hear about. The problem is, those places are understandably very expensive and often full of rich people who tend to skew conservative. Does anyone know of a terrific warm weather community of liberals and artsy types? Could be a big city or a small town, would prefer the U.S but it's not a deal breaker. Here in America, those kinds of communities tend to be in the north for some reason. Hawaii seems like a good option, but it's so isolated from the rest of the world and live events come on TV so early there.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Regular readers will remember that two days ago I claimed it was my birthday and that I was off to the doctor for my yearly checkup. Both things happened, here is the update:

1. Because of my birthday claim, a handful of you donated funds to my paypal account and received a personal email of thanks from me. I am touched. My heart is weeping. I feel goo in my shoes. Honestly, you are too kind and I assure you that the money will not be spent on booze, courtesans, cheap cigars or flashy clothing. Nor will I spend it on unnecessary items. (ba da boom)

2.Doctor visit was fine. He looked at, around, over, and in me and found nothing alarming. He also borrowed some bodily fluids for further testing (I told him he could keep them, no need to give them back) and told me to call next week for results. I'll let you know if any particularly dark news comes my way, but I'm not expecting any, as I have no symptoms.

Except for my gushing eyes, which continue to weep from the kindness shown by those of you who hit the "donate" button at right. Garsh, I'm beside myself.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

I haven't had a birthday in a while, so let's say today is my birthday. Please donate lots of money to me with the PayPal donation button on the right. I'm only a little bit famous and not rich at all, so I could really use it. Go for it. If everyone who reads this blog donates just $5, I'll have over $40 to spend on something nice for myself!

I normally post a contest on Thursdays, but I'm not going to be able to today because I have to pay a relative stranger to put his finger in my butt. Yes, it's time for my yearly checkup. To find out what I'm going to die of and how soon, check this blog tomorrow.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

This is a real good deal for college students who want to be cartoonists. The National Cartoonists Society gives out a scholarship each year and you get to come to our annual convention and meet all the famous guys and stuff.

This is one of my personal favorites of late. Something about the goose/gorilla/teacher's matter-of-fact attitude about her "suspicions" makes me smile. Drawing her was a kick. (Random note: the character at left unintentionally ended up looking a lot like my cousin,Steve, in Kansas City.)

I grew up in Oklahoma alongside people who actually believed in black magic. They were "born again" Christians and didn't practice BM themselves, of course, but believed it existed, would not allow their children to play with Ouija boards or dress as anything "evil" on Halloween. They sincerely believed these kinds of activities attracted the attention of Satan and would lead to no good. They were also completely convinced that Satanic cults were responsible for the majority of missing children in the U.S. as a result of their need to make regular human sacrifices.

I know there are still plenty of people in first-world nations who believe in black magic even today. Perhaps some of you readers do. You're welcome to your beliefs, of course, who am I to judge? (Other than a rational, thinking human being who can say with reasonable certainty that all magic is illusion and/or suggestion.)

Whether you believe in invisible forces or not, hope you got a smile from this cartoon.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I could go off on another of my religious screeds but I shan't. For I findst mineself woefully arrears on mine weekly deadlineth and fear I shall be smited sorely.

Instead, let's say this cartoon reflects my own lack of expertise in the area of metric measurements (not to mention Biblical.) Like many of you, I was in public school in the seventies when the U.S. gov decided to get us on track with the rest of the world and switch us all to metric. It worked about as well as the "war on drugs" and our move toward independence from foreign oil.

All I'm saying is – God, don't be asking me to build the next ark unless you're going to explain it in feet and inches. Come to think of it, since you're all magic and ominipotent and stuff, why don't you just zap an ark into existence and tell me where to find it? Please make sure it has Internet, cable TV, and a decent-sized kitchen. Think "MTV crib" with animals.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Okay, so this cartoon could be construed as being political and my readers often object to my doing that, but I think this is a good kind of political. It makes a broad point about human nature, not something specific to any particular party's beliefs, therefore not likely to alienate any of my readers. Even viewers of Fox News.

It is an immutable fact that humans are far and away the most dangerous and destructive animal on the planet, but we are so anthropocentric that as soon as any other beast touches one of us, posses of goobers comb the countryside killing everything that looks like the offender. Sad, unjust, shortsighted, perverse, but utterly predictable.

But to be fair to we humans, I think it is good to note that if any other species had risen to our level of dominance, it would likely have behaved similarly. Survival (of oneself, one's offspring, species, way of life, etc.) is a such a strong primal urge that it is not easily defeated. When we or one of ours has been attacked, it is easy for emotion to overcome reason and strike back irrationally.

Our mutant brains are simultaneously our greatest ally and our biggest fault. In the hands of a fool, the human brain is a deadly weapon. (You may quote me. Please. I'm dying to be quoted by someone for any reason at all. My ego is an eggshell in a hurricane, throw me a bone.)

Sorry for the mixed metaphor in that last sentence. I hope it does not deter you from quoting me.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Here's the third in a continuing series of puns. I like unusual puns but don't often think of them, so the vast majority of the ones you see in this series are donated from friends or readers. If you think of an original pun, send it to me via email (found on Bizarro.com) or as a comment on my blog. If I think it might make a fun gag, you may experience the ecstasy of seeing your idea in the Sunday comics. But keep in mind, that's the only compensation you'll get. It's not a paying gig, it's just for giggles.

The most challenging thing about the ones above was rendering the college professors in chocolate. It was a bit harder than I thought it would be. I wanted to make them dark enough to look like chocolate, but not so dark that they looked like globs of motor oil. Also, without the mortarboard caps, there would be nothing to identify them as academia so I had to include that on each one, which crowds the box and adds a level of confusion that wouldn't have been there otherwise. In the end, I think it works well enough.

Drawing feet from a jillion different angles was no picnic either, but I've always been pretty good with anatomy, so it wasn't a nightmare.

Until Monday, "Keep a song in your heart and a dagger in your teeth." --Doris Day

Friday, January 8, 2010

Today is a good day because I get to post one of my favorite efforts in a while. I'm not one of those sappy cartoonists who claims to love all of his creations equally. I don't. In fact, I'm not even one of those sappy parents who claims to love all of his children equally. I definitely love one of my daughters much more than the other. (I'm not saying which one because they both read this blog. You know who you are, pumpkin, don't say anything to your sister.)

Thanks to everyone who played our little game puzzle contest thingy. If I'm still alive and in command of my faculties, I shall post another contest next Thursday. Until then, please enjoy my daily postings of cartoons and other nonsense, one of which will appear in this space within the hour.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

RULES, ETC:As usual, two images are posted below, one is the original cartoon, the warped image beneath it has been changed in 15 ways. Your mission, if you are a righteous hero of historic proportion is to find those differences.

1. There are 15 differences between the two cartoons.2.NONE of the differences have to do with the warped nature of the second image.3. ALL of the differences are something missing, added, or moved, not just "bent" from the distortion. The differences will not be too subtle, so once you spot one you should be relatively certain you've found it. (As opposed to something like, "I think that guy has one extra whisker. Hmmm.")4.FIRST PERSON to correctly list the 15 differencesin the comments section of the post wins 5 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards, mailed by me personally from Bizarro International Headquartersin Brooklyn. I'll even lick the stamp, unless it's self adhesive. SECOND AND THIRD persons with correct answers will each get 2 packs of Bizarro Trading Cards!5.Put your email address on your comment so I can contact you if you win. I won't post it or keep it or file it or sell it or mount a Broadway musical about it.6. If you live outside the U.S., I may not be able to send you a prize. Depends. Canada is probably fine, Saudia Arabia, probably not.

I do a lot of cartoons about people sitting in bars, as do many cartoonists, but I don't actually spend any time in bars. But as much as I dislike smalltalk with strangers, noise, uncomfortable seating and overpriced drinks, a bar is still a terrific setting for two people who don't know each other to exchange punch lines. So here we are.

Pretty soon I'm going to start doing the occasional video blog. Do you think that would be fun? I'll just sit at my desk and talk into a home video camera about the day's cartoon or whatever. Let me know your thoughts.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

If you're like me and you enjoy cartoons that look as though they were written by a 7th grader (but weren't), try this online comic I just discovered. I got some chuckles here but you have to search a bit.

Monday, January 4, 2010

"There IS NO significant man made global warming. C’mon, get with the program. The waders are for all the nonsense and outright fabrications about this topic."

I get this sort of thing fairly regularly from climate change deniers, creationists, people of all sorts who ignore science in favor of beliefs that are more comforting than the truth.

In truth, I hope this guy is right and the data is wrong. It will make for a much more pleasant future. As it looks now, however, I may live long enough to see wide scale famine in North America and my own neighborhood underwater. Drag.

One other thing that the climate change deniers ignore: the overwhelming majority of scientists in the world corroborate the phenomenon and have little or nothing to gain by doing so (other than a handful of grant money to study it), while the very few scientists and politicians who deny it are attached to multi-billion-dollar corporations who make their living polluting the planet.

Does it really take Einstein to figure out who has a bigger motivation to lie?

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Here's another Xmas cartoon. Although I'm not a believer, it does amaze me how many disparate things Xmas is used for. When you compare the sort of movies that are released "for Christmas" with the original myth the holiday is based on, it's fairly ludicrous. So I found some humor in combining the two.

I did a similar comic many years back with basically the same sort of picture, but the angel is saying something along the lines of, "...and His birth will be celebrated with snow and flying livestock and wild office parties and a magic fat man who lives at the North Pole." To which one of the shepherds says to the other, "He's drunk."

Just for hoots, here's one of my favorite Xmas cartoons from a few years ago.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

A lot of cartoonists do holiday-themed cartoons on major holidays as a matter of routine, I only do them now and then. If I can think of a good one far enough ahead to use it, I will, but I'm often oblivious to the date or what's coming up in the next month or two so it just doesn't work out. A few days before Xmas this year, for instance, I thought of a great cartoon about the Three Wise Men but, alas, it will have to wait until next year.

I like this one because it makes a ridiculous connection between two very unlikely bedfellows. The idea of Bigfoot throwing presents through people's windows makes me giggle. And giggling is good.

Today is the day after New Year's Day, sometimes referred to by laymen as January 2nd. My good friend and genius cartoonist, Reuben Bolling published a particularly brilliant cartoon today so I thought I'd post it here for your edification. Hope you like it, hope you have a prosperous '10.